Circling Around the Moon
by The Lady Arianrod
Summary: A Spike songfic to a bluesy song about lost love. The cowboy thinks about his past and his loneliness, and about Julia. Spike/Julia, some angst.


Circling Around the Moon by Takato's Dreamer (rainytears)

  


a/n: first Cowboy Bebop fic. Takes place during the series, when Spike is thinking about how he lost someone long ago named Julia..... I haven't seen the end of the series but I know how it ends. Takes place when Spike is **alive.**

  


Disclaimer: Cowboy Bebop is owned by Sunrise and Bandai. The song that the title is named for is by John Mellencamp.

  


  


// is lyrics//

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~`~~

  


Spike Spiegel laid back on the navy blue sofa in the spaceship Bebop. He closed his eyes for a minute, resting his head on his folded arms.

  


He saw only darkness. The black beckoned to him, offering lost memories and momentary comfort.....

  


The lonely cowboy accepted. 

  


Flooding moments of brief recollections came to Spike's mind's eye. He saw happiness, and he saw one face continually staring out at him: a blonde woman with a warm and welcoming aura.

  


He knew her.

  


It was Julia.

  


Spike wondered for a moment where she was now. They were in love once, he knew. But now, time and duty had separated them. So had amnesia.

  


//There may come a day when you grow weary 

Troubled waters stain the paper cup 

From other venues, other voices carry 

Spilled dreams soaking into thirsty dust // 

  


Julia was probably a more mature woman now. She'd probably forgotten about Spike, met other people who interested her more.

  


But then why couldn't Spike forget her?

  


This woman was a lifetime away, a changed person since Spike had known her.

  


And loved her.

  


Spike still couldn't help but wonder if she was married, or if she still held memories of their love and relationship. No doubt she recalled more than he did..... but, seriously. Who would remember some drifter from the past if they were happily married now?

  


Secretly, the bounty hunter hoped she wasn't.

  


  


//Maybe then and there you'll find another 

Lover with a blank and empty heart 

Filled with breath and old sails to discover 

Strength to push the seas apart// 

  


Spike blinked his chocolate brown eyes open and looked around. Jet, Faye, and Ed weren't around. He didn't feel like getting up and seeing any of them anyway.

  


He had something on his mind.

  


A lonely cowboy wasn't even supposed to love. He didn't have the time, the dedication, or the heart even for it. 

  


Was Spike really this kind of cowboy?

  


At least he had to keep living this facade, this supposed sullen indifference when really a mystery was eating his brain alive....

  


And his heart.

  


Who the hell was Julia anyway? 

  


He had to find out, not just for some sappy reunion but to gain back his past. Spike was a bounty hunter now, but even his old emotions were so damn grating.....

  


It was his own fault. His secretly hungry heart was the one who was searching. And his heart would stop at nothing to find its soulmate.

  


Julia.

  


"_Maybe you'll meet another person. A wanderer looking for love will pick you up for a while, sail around the bay with you, then drop you off back on the sandy beach. You'll watch him leave for the sunset, just like all the other ships...._" Spike thought, shoving his hands in his pockets.

  


  


//On the day we met 

I began to want you 

On the day we met 

I began to lose you too// 

  


He couldn't remember their first meeting.

  


It didn't matter anyway, because they wouldn't have another one. He'd probably fallen in love right away like a fool, only sinking deeper into the unknown oblivion of love and dedication. 

  


It was probably fate that he'd lost her too. 

  


And now Spike was still searching, trying to undo the fate that he had been shoved into, still believing with an uncharacteristic hope that he would meet up with this 'mystery girl' again.

  


He could never tell Jet or Faye this. They'd laugh at him, mocking his secret hope and steadfastness in a lonely, empty universe. He'd never meet someone out of billions of people throughout the galaxies. 

  


Somehow Spike wished that he could.....

  


  


//Both of us circling round the moon 

Both of us circling round the moon// 

  


Who knows, maybe she was looking for him too. Maybe she was on another spaceship or something, peeking out of the window with pathetically wistful eyes, waiting for her old flame to drift by.

  


Yeah, right.

  


Julia was long gone. She was someone else, he was someone else. Spike wasn't linked to her in this new life of bounty-hunting....

  


He felt empty all of the time, yet fulfilled. The job kept him busy, kept him kicking ass while he searched for Julia all the while. 

  


Jet and Faye knew he was looking for someone, but not so desperately. They didn't know what he thought.

  


At least he hoped they weren't mind-readers.

  


Spike's luck would probably lead him to a restaurant or something, where he'd arrive a moment after Julia climbed into her car and left.

  


Yep, that's probably what would happen.

  


//There may come a day when you feel anger 

China cracked and glued by clumsy hands 

Veins of memory touching only hunger 

The heart devours what it cannot understand// 

  


"_Maybe, Julia,_ _ you'll get mad at me. You'll think that I left you purposely or something, if you didn't get amnesia like I did. Fate does suck, but I didn't leave you on purpose. Honest._" 

  


Spike had no emotion really. Just a lack of emotion.

  


He could best describe it as 'hunger'. No, not the constant raiding of the fridge for food that he and Faye always did, but the longing for something.

  


Something he couldn't explain. Someone, maybe.

  


He knew that it all was connected to Julia. She was the distant goal of his searching, his secret object of obsession. 

  


She was what he hungered for.

  


For now what they had was lost. All he had to do was wait, wish, and hope. Nah, hoping was the equivalent to sitting on one's ass, in Spike's dictionary.

  


Searching was what he had to do.

  


//On the day we met 

I began to want you 

On the day we met 

I began to lose you too 

Both of us circling round the moon 

Both of us circling round the moon// 

  


  


Lost love sucks. What's even more annoying are grating emotions.... the hunger of the soul. 

  


With Spike's luck, he's continue floating around the moon, always a second too late to catch his mystery girl. She's look back and sorta recognize him, but brush it off......

  


He was doomed to wandering.

  


At least before he found out everything that he used to be before he became a bounty hunter on his lonely, interminable orbit around the silence of space. 

  


//Maybe it was then I saw my future 

Saw it as a shadow on the ground 

Beneath the earth old nails to discover 

Strength to hold my body down//

  


Maybe back in those times Spike couldn't remember, he saw a future for him and Julia. Not a corny scene on a balcony out of a movie, but an honest and realistic relationship between two young and eager hearts.....

  


Now his future was shadowy. It was always doomed to be shadowy, in this new phase of his life. Spike didn't know if he'd die in the next day on the job or if he'd end up chasing someone halfway across the galaxy just to get back some artifact.

  


The element of mystery was fine for a lonely drifter, but.......

  


Something was missing.

  


Someone was.

  


And Spike was determined to get back the clear-cut life, the one he once had. The memories were contained in one person..........

  


Julia.

  


She was everything Spike didn't have, the company that he was missing as he drifted amongst the faintly glowing diamond stars.

  


  


//On the day we met 

I began to want you 

On the day we met 

I began to lose you too 

Both of us circling round the moon// 

  


Spike sighed. His life was sort of like a screwed-up version of the classic boy-meets-girl thing:

  


Boy meets girl. Boy loses girl. Boy loses memory.

  


Or something like that.

  


If he was doomed to these feelings, these impossible dreams, he didn't care. 

  


He'd drift around the moon forever.

  


//Both of us circling round the moon 

the both of us circling round the moon 

both of us circling round the moon//

  


And Julia would probably drift along too, slowly forgetting him every day.

  


The cowboy in Spike wanted him to forget the girl, but Spike Spiegel had other plans.

  


He's search every day, throughout the galaxy, for all of eternity.

  


Even if it killed him.

  


Spike woke up from his reverie to find Faye Valentine looking at him weirdly.

  


"What's up with you? You look even more detached and pissed-off than usual?" she asked briskly, eyeing Spike.

  


Spike stood up and shrugged. 

  


"Just trying to find something I lost," he said briefly in a mellow voice.

  


He turned then, and left the purple-haired woman to shake her head in wonder.

  


Spike turned his head around and smiled slyly.

  


"I claim the last sub in the fridge!" he yelled, then ran for the refrigerator. Faye ran after him, screaming and cursing at her fellow bounty hunter.

  


  


The End. 

  


  


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end notes: i love that song, and it seemed to fit the lost love, doomed-to-drift feeling of Spike and Julia's relationship. It was kind of sad, kind of angsty, but I tried to show two sides of Spike: the cynical attitude that tries to hide his other side, the hungry and lonely heart. 

  


  


Review if you like.

  


  


  



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